Archive of previous NTS Skeptical News listings

Sunday, February 16, 2003

Armageddon asteroids 'best
kept secret'

A scientific adviser to the United States
government has suggested that secrecy might be
the best option if scientists were ever to discover
that a giant asteroid was on course to collide with
Earth.

In certain circumstances, nothing could be done
to avoid such a collision and ensuing destruction,
and it would be best not to tell the public anything,
said Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation
in Santa Monica, California.

"When a problem arises with high uncertainty,
there is an opportunity to spin the problem to
avoid global panic. If you can't do anything about a
warning, then there is no point in issuing a
warning at all," Dr Sommer told the association
yesterday.

"If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then
ignorance for the populace is bliss. As a matter of
common sense, if you can't intercept it and you
can't move people out of the way in time, there's
nothing you can do in terms of reducing the costs
of the potential impact," he said.

"Overreaction not just by the public but by
policy-makers scurrying around before the thing
actually hits because we can't do anything about it anyway ... to a large extent you
are better off not adding to your social costs," said Dr Sommer, who is also an
adviser on terrorism.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is conducting a
25-year survey of the sky to find asteroids wider than a kilometre which could
have a devastating impact if they collided with Earth.

So far they have determined the orbits of about 60 per cent of these objects and
none so far have a trajectory that threatens the world within the next couple of
centuries, said David Morrison of Nasa's Ames laboratory in Moffat Field,
California.

"There are, however, many things out there that we know nothing about," he
said.

Astronomers look for space-time 'atoms'

DENVER, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The most powerful explosions in the universe
finally might provide the clues scientists need to uncover the structure of
the very fabric of the universe -- the very stuff of space-time -- a
Canadian researcher said late Saturday.

If the new theory can be supported, it could help solve some of the
greatest mysteries of the cosmos that have stumped the best particle
physicists and cosmologists -- who study the nature of the universe -- for
years.

"We could describe the entire universe, find out what is the nature of
time, what happened at the Big Bang, whether the life of the universe is
infinite or finite," said Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara, a physicist with the
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont.

The most persistent and vexing dilemma underlying practically all unsolved
problems in physics is how to establish a so-called "theory of everything."
At present, two great but seemingly contradictory theories are the bases
for understanding the universe.

Einstein's theory of relativity describes time as variable, the speed of
light as constant and gravity the result of space being warped by large
chunks of matter, such as stars and, to a lesser degree, planetary bodies.
Its components have been validated repeatedly by observations at both
planetary and galactic scales.

Meanwhile, quantum theory describes the interaction of subatomic particles
with exotic names such as quarks and leptons. Among its strange principles
is an observer can determine either the position or the energy level of a
subatomic particle, but never at the same time.

For more than half a century, however, these twin towers of science have
had to remain separate because no one has been able to reconcile them. In
fact, most attempts to unite relativity and quantum physics have resulted
in gobbledygook.

For instance, based on experimental observations, quantum theory asserts
that particles can exist in two or more places at once. When this combines
with general relativity, which describes the very shape of space and time,
"what is past and future becomes fuzzy," Markopoulou Kalamara said. "It
doesn't make any sense."

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Markopoulou Kalamara explained how she and
colleagues hope an entirely different approach -- made possible by
exquisitely sensitive instruments aboard a new satellite -- will result in
finding the Holy Grail of physics: the Grand Unified Theory.

To do so, researchers must study phenomena at Planck scales, where current
theoretical understandings of space and time break down. Planck scales --
named for German physicist Max Planck -- enter the realm of the
unimaginable. For instance, Planck temperatures are about 100 million
trillion trillion degrees Celsius. "The geometry of space-time at that
temperature melts," Markopoulou Kalamara said. "The center of a star
compared to that is cold."

Markopoulou Kalamara suggested that, like the conventional matter that
comprises the Earth, the sun and the stars, space and time likewise are
made of "atoms," except they are irreducible. If shown to be true, the
finding would be compatible with both relativity and quantum theory, she said.

Detecting such particles has long thought to be impossible because they
exist at Planck sizes. The Planck scale of distance is some 100 trillion
trillion times smaller than an atomic nucleus, which is roughly 100
trillion trillion times smaller than the Earth.

The observations are scheduled to begin in 2006, Markopoulou Kalamara
explained, with the launch of a new NASA probe called the Gamma-ray Large
Area Space Telescope. GLAST is going to attempt to detect space-time atoms
-- though indirectly. The satellite will scan the heavens for gamma ray
bursts, the largest explosions known.

"In 10 seconds, they can release as much energy as the sun does in its
whole 10 billion year lifetime," Markopoulou Kalamara said. "They come from
the furthest away galaxies. The reason we can see them is because they have
such insanely high energies."

Like light, gamma rays emitted by these bursts travel at a constant speed
and should reach an observer simultaneously. However, if space-time atoms
exist, she said, "the photons would appear to not all travel at the same
speed."

The reason is surprisingly simple. Markopoulou Kalamara said because some
gamma rays have less energy than others, they would have to travel
different routes to reach an observer -- because a space-time continuum
that is atomic would be lumpy in places.

"Imagine if a (billiard) table is lumpy," she explained, and more energetic
gamma rays, with their shorter wavelengths, are the equivalent of smaller
billiard balls. "You can imagine that the shorter wavelength rays would
actually get knocked around by the (space-time) lumps more easily than the
bigger guys that roll right over them."

Such Planck scale deflections normally would be far too small to detect.
However, over enormous distances, such as the billions of light-years
between Earth and the sources of gamma ray bursts, the deflections would
accumulate. Gamma rays that traveled longer routes due to space-time atom
deflection would appear to have moved at a speed slower than light.

"I'm often worried about theories invented because of their elegance," said
physicist Robert Robertson of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.,
explaining that such ideas do not necessarily relate to real-world phenomena.

"What I admire a great deal about what (Markopoulou Kalamara and
colleagues) are doing is they're looking at phenomena and trying to get a
theory that can go with them," he said.

Book recounts two-week terror of Mattoon's Mad Gasser

It was a crisp, fall night during the first week of September 1944 when the reports of
a young Mattoon housewife launched a community panic that drew attention from
every corner of the nation.

It was just after Aline Kearney got into bed on that Friday evening that she noticed an
odd smell coming from just outside her bedroom window. Within minutes, she began
to experience a paralyzing feeling in her legs, accompanied by a dry throat and a
burning sensation in her lips.

Kearney immediately called for help and her neighbors promptly alerted the
authorities. The next evening, the front page of the Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette
warned residents with a bold headline announcing: "Anesthetic Prowler on Loose."

Over the two weeks that followed, dozens of reports poured into the Mattoon police
station, sending officers rushing to every section of the city in search of the prowler,
who was later dubbed the "mad gasser of Mattoon." Almost 59 years later, the mad gasser case remains one of the most well-known
examples of mass hysteria during the 20th century, according to Vermont sociologist and writer Robert Bartholomew.

Bartholomew has studied the mad gasser case extensively and has devoted chapters in two of his books to the famous Mattoon
incident. Bartholomew's new book, "Hoaxes, Myths and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking," is co-authored with Ben Radford and
will be available next month.

Lunar-tics

There's going to be a comedic section here,'' Bart Sibrel says. ''Some
man-on-the-street kind of interviews that I did.'' He hits the
fast-forward control to race through a rough cut of his new
documentary. Sibrel's studio, located along a strip of storefront
recording joints and one-room editing suites known as Nashville's Music
Row, is actually his tiny two-room apartment, crammed with mixers and
Apple computers. On a Sony Trinitron, the video screeches to a halt and
then rolls on some average folks exercising their First Amendment right
to express heartfelt opinions on both sides of a debate.

One American says, ''Yes, I think we walked on the moon.''

Another American offers balance: ''Jury's still out in my opinion.''

Sibrel cranks up the background music he has selected, and the familiar
voice of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe brings it on home: If you believed they
put a man on the moon, man on the moon. If you believe there's nothing
up my sleeve, then nothing is cool.

Sibrel is part of a new generation of conspiracy mega-theorists. They
don't toy with the small stuff. Ever since the passing of that sweet,
simpler time -- when the Trilateral Commission ordered the hit on John
Kennedy and the Queen of England managed the drug cartels -- the
narratives of big suspicion have been distorted by the same force that
has reshaped our partisan politics, action movies and morning TV talk
shows: outrage inflation. To be noticed now, a theory must be of a
scope only Stephen Hawking could measure, and it must be promulgated by
an amiable spokesman who can deftly juggle often absurd contradictions.
Sibrel is not your father's conspiracy theorist -- some grumpy
autodidact with a self-published book raging at the gates of the
establishment. Sibrel came of age in the post-Watergate era. He has
absorbed the real lesson of the last two decades: push for belief in
ever bolder and more unlikely ideas. Plus, he knows how to make decent
television.

Sibrel's first documentary, ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Moon,'' is a 47-minute feature contending that what people saw on their
television screens that famous July night in 1969 was in fact filmed on
a back lot. (Sibrel says he believes that it was probably directed by
Stanley Kubrick and shot at Area 51 in Nevada.)

OVER 600 FILL AN OVERFLOWING UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AUDITORIUM TO LISTEN TO WILLIAM HATCHER'S LECTURE ON THE
LOGICAL PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE

Toronto (April 11, 2002) - More than 600 people jammed the Earth Sciences Auditorium of the University of Toronto on 28 March to hear Professor William Hatcher of
Quebec City deliver a two-hour presentation on his logical proof of the existence of God organized by the Campus Association of Bahá'í Studies (CABS). A similar
address at McGill University two months ago attracted more than 900 faculty and students.

This event was organized in a systematic, modular fashion. The CABS membership was divided into groups and each taskforce was charged with a very clear mandate.
While one group prepared the posters that publicised the event, other groups designed invitations for distribution to professors and other faculty-members, constructed an
online presence for CABS that included information relevant to Dr. Hatcher's address, drafted press releases and made preparations for the evening of the presentation
itself. Each group was headed by a manager, who was ultimately responsible for the completion of an assignment. The manager was directly assisted by two or three
additional individuals and was guided by a panel of consultants.

...

Relying on a modern innovation in mathematics and logic that serves as the foundation for computer programming, Dr. Hatcher drew on relational logic to refine and
update a classical proof of God's existence.

Dr. Hatcher's presentation identified the historical antecedents of the proof of the existence of God and explored its connections to theological conceptions of God while
providing several significant insights that contribute much to contemporary popular and philosophical discussions.

Hatcher began by considering Aristotle's use of attributional logic (the syllogism) and then proceeded to examine Avicenna's implicit reliance on a form of relational logic
to refine Aristotle's proof. Avicenna's work is impressive given that our understanding of relational logic is largely due to the work of modern-day philosophers and
mathematicians such as G. Frege and von Neumann. Investigations by these and other individuals have provided the foundation for our knowledge of formal language
systems and relational logic, both of which are essential components of computer science.

Noting the parallel implications of this development in modern logic, that has served the 'information revolution' and now Hatcher's new formulation of a proof of the
existence of God, Hatcher delivered his lecture with modesty and a warm sense of humor that captivated the attention of his audience through two hours of coherent,
compelling and challenging demonstration.

Dr. Hatcher maintains that his proof is merely an elucidation of Avicenna's seminal proof through the use of modern logic and is based on three fundamental
assumptions.* Based on these three principles, Dr. Hatcher proved that there is indeed only one cause of all reality and that cause is itself uncaused, unique and
non-composite.

Having thus shown that God is unique, universal and self- or uncaused, Dr. Hatcher qualifies his proof with the proviso that this is a "minimalist" understanding of God
and does not preclude the fuller characterizations of God that can be found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha'i Faith. In fact, one of the implications of Dr.
Hatcher's proof is that these religions all describe the same God.

Following the lecture a question and answer period was held. In the end the event was highly successful; the lecture hall was filled beyond capacity, almost all 400
pamphlets were picked up and 26 books were sold. A week following the lecture a follow-up session was held at the Toronto Baha'i Centre attended by several
individuals including a university professor.

As they are so crucial to the proof, it may be of interest to some to identify briefly those three assumptions:

1.First, Hatcher explains the principle of sufficient reason, involving a discussion of causality which does not ignore David Hume's important observations but which
allows Hatcher to clarify how his realist position is more compelling than Hame's sceptical empiricism. This is related, too, to Hatcher's distinguishing his position
from Kant's unnecessary limitation of reality to only that which we can know. On that point Hatcher is especially interesting in the context of contemporary
discourse in pointing to the regrettable habit of stating universal negatives. This is the habit of saying, "we know this, and that's all." It would be better to say, "We
know this." and omit the universal negative which is reductionist and closes off intellectual inquiry.

2.There is a second, equally compelling assumption crucial to Hatcher's proof, that he terms the "potency" principle. This is merely the statement, or observation,
that what is a cause of a phenomenon is also a cause of a part of that phenomenon.

3.The third assumption is the principle of "limitation" which states that a phenomenon cannot cause a part of itself. Hatcher is careful to explain that "phenomenon"
is strictly defined as a unique phenomenon such that dynamic organisms and systems must be understood, over time, as a series of phenomena so that when the
organism generates changes within itself, the phenomenon causes a new and different organism. So, this principle is maintained if challenged on that point.

NASA scientists know little about 'ignorosphere'

SAN JOSE, Calif. (February 10, 8:07 a.m. AST) - The space shuttle Columbia broke up in a mysterious area of the upper
atmosphere once so little understood and difficult to study that scientists dubbed it the "ignorosphere."

The region is of particular interest not only because that's where the disintegration occurred but also because of a
time-exposure image taken by an amateur astronomer showing a snake of purplish light corkscrewing through the
shuttle's hot glowing trail as it crossed over California.

Former shuttle astronaut Tammy Jernigan collected the camera and the image from the photographer, who has
requested anonymity while NASA analyzes the shot. It's not clear whether the flash is real, or an aberration of the
camera.

The shuttle was traveling at 12,000 mph at an altitude of 39 miles as it disintegrated Feb. 1 in the searing heat of
re-entry, for reasons still unknown. All seven astronauts were killed.

Columbia was crossing through the mesosphere, or middle atmosphere, which extends from about 30 to 50 miles above
the surface. It's also called the ionosphere, because of the presence of free electrons - or ions.

"We're discovering the middle atmosphere has got a lot of electrical phenomena," said Walt Lyons, president of the FMA
Research in Fort Collins, Colo. "The key message here is that there may be more things going on up there that we just
don't understand or have no inkling of yet."

In a report published last year, NASA researchers said experts have "so far" concluded that the electromagnetic
phenomena or ice crystals from the highest clouds are not known to pose a danger to shuttles on re-entry.

Moreover, conditions on Feb. 1 were not right for the most dangerous occurrences, though other experts caution that
much remains unknown about this part of the atmosphere.

The region has been difficult to study, because it's too high for balloons and aircraft, yet it's too low and the air is too
heavy for satellites, which would be unable to stay in orbit because of the drag, said Umran Inan, a physicist at
Stanford University.

"You can't make local measurements with any regularity," he said. "You can have a single rocket shot through the
region, but the phenomena are dynamic and change from place to place and time to time."

In the ionosphere, ultraviolet energy from the sun as well as cosmic rays from faraway stars separate electrons from
atomic nuclei. The free electrons give the area a characteristic not unlike metal, in that it can reflect electromagnetic
energy.

These electrons also create strange electrical effects, with fanciful names like "elves," "sprites" and "blue jets." Until
recently, they were largely dismissed as illusions, noticed only by bleary-eyed airline pilots.

All those phenomena are related to thunderstorms, which were not recorded in the area at the time of Columbia's
descent.

The 2002 report by Kennedy researchers also noted some risk from "noctilucent" clouds, which are the highest clouds in
the atmosphere. During hypersonic flight, ice crystals in the clouds could pose a corrosion or abrasion hazard to
shuttles and "certainly" increase drag.

"The most severe effect of entry through a noctilucent cloud would probably be the erosion of the thermal protection
system during the most critical heating region," the report said. "Depending on the particle size, sufficient damage could
be done to result in loss of vehicle."

But it's not likely the shuttle passed through such a cloud, since they tend to occur from May to August.

Still, scientists are just starting to understand phenomena in the upper atmosphere.

"The research we've been able to do has made us realize it's even weirder than we thought," Lyons said. "There may be
other things that happen up there that we just don't know about. Maybe we just encountered a new phenomenon the
hard way."

Senate, ban holding therapy

The Utah House of Representatives is to be commended for passing, by an overwhelming majority, a ban on so-called
holding therapy.

The House this past week voted 68-2 to restrict therapies where counselors restrict the movement of children —
sometimes forcefully. The techniques, which resulted in the death of a Utah child in 1997 and is suspected in the death of
another in 2002, have not withstood scientific review and are not sectioned by reputable psychiatric organizations. Although
these children died while in the care of their own parents, the parents have alleged they conducted holding therapy upon the
advice of mental health practitioners.

To help ensure the safety of Utah children from these potentially life-threatening practices, the Utah Senate needs to take
the next step by approving HB5, the "Prohibition of Coercive Restraint."

Some lawmakers may hesitate to ban a therapeutic practice. They should know that other states have banned these
potentially dangerous therapies.

Moreover, prohibiting this practice is no different than the federal government refusing to sanction certain treatments for
diseases. Laetrile wasn't approved as a cancer treatment, for instance, because it didn't work.

Coercive therapies are most often used for children with reactive attachment disorders, which has been associated with
adopted children who spent a long time in abusive situations or institutions. While some adoptive parents will make
compelling arguments for the procedure, legislators need to ask for the literature or scientific review that validates these
practices. Simply put, there are none.

Many adopted children in Utah have been in state custody. That means their adoptive parents may receive government
subsidies to help provide for their mental health care. Government has a responsibility to ensure adoption subsidies are spent
for treatments sanctioned by reputable mental health organizations.

Nationwide, eight children have died after undergoing these therapies. Utah has had two cases where two little girls —
Krystal and Cassandra, both 4 years old — died after their parents claimed they had followed the orders of their therapists.
We ask the Senate to remember those two little girls as they consider this legislation. The government is not overreaching
in this case. Rather, the ban would err on the side of saving innocent children's lives.

Researchers wrestled with this question on Friday at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Denver.

Some suggested there was no point worrying the global population about its
imminent demise.

"If there is absolutely nothing you can do about it - you can't intercept it,
you can't move people out of the way - then it makes no sense to incur social
costs from whatever panic or overreaction there will be," argued Geoffrey
Sommer, of the Rand Corporation, who has been studying how policymakers should
react and prepare for Armageddon.

"If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populous is
bliss."

But hang on, don't we have right to know?

"I'd certainly want to know and it's not up to some bureaucrat to keep that from
me," said Lee Clarke, a sociology professor at Rutgers, The State University of
New Jersey.

Space search

Clarke is an expert in disasters and in organisational and technological
failures.

He has written about panic, civil defence, evacuation and community response to
disaster, and says people tend to react well in a crisis.

"The single most important reason there were not more casualties at the World
Trade Center collapse was because there was no panic," he argued. "It does
happen - there are soccer stampedes and the like - but it is very rare."

The possibility of a major impact from space is a certainty. The geological
record shows the Earth has been hit many times by large objects - some of which
have come close to wiping life clean from the face of the planet.

All asteroid researchers say we will be hit again by objects much greater than
one kilometre across - although it may not happen for tens, hundreds or even
thousands of years.

The Spaceguard Survey, conducted by the US space agency (Nasa), is looking for
these big rocks with wide-field telescopes.

In the space out to about 200 million km, it has so far found about 650
"monsters" - none of which have orbits that pose a threat to the Earth. There is
possibly a similar figure of undiscovered one-km-plus-sized rocks in the same
region of space that have yet to be tracked down.

If a threatening object is found, many researchers are confident Earth will have
the time and the technology to do something about it.

Constant 'rain'

Clark Chapman is an asteroid scientist from the Southwest Research Institute. He
told the AAAS meeting:

"We've landed a spacecraft on an asteroid; we have thrusting devices. We don't
need a bomb. We could push on it and push it out of the way.

"It would take a while but we could deal with it. The real problem arises with
comets that come from the deep, dark reaches of the outer Solar System.

"We don't see them until they get to Jupiter and they're in the vicinity of the
Earth within a few months or a year after that. Perhaps there won't be enough
time to deal with that."

All are agreed that proper disaster plans need to be put in place now and that
the public needs to be educated about the real threat and how we might cope.

Every year, a small asteroid explodes in the Earth's atmosphere with an energy
equivalent to 5,000 tonnes of TNT. Lee Clarke said: "Stuff comes in and it blows
up. This sort of thing needs to be common knowledge."

Mars 'once warm and wet'

The ice cap at Mars' south pole is made almost entirely of ice made from water,
rather than from carbon dioxide as had previously been thought, scientists say.
New data from an unmanned spacecraft in orbit around the planet show that the
south pole is very similar to the north pole, which is made up of frozen water,
with just a thin covering of frozen carbon dioxide.

The findings - from scientists at the California Institute of Technology -
indicate that any astronauts visiting the planet would not be short of water.

But it also means that it would be difficult to make Mars habitable in the
future because there is less carbon dioxide there than previously thought, and
carbon dioxide is what is needed to trap heat and warm the planet up.

New goal

Writing in the magazine Science, Professor Andy Ingersoll and his graduate
student, Shane Byrne, argue that the old model is inaccurate.

They say the south polar cap is too warm to be carbon dioxide, or dry ice, as
previously believed.

According to the new study, the south pole's dry ice cover is slightly thicker
than the one found in the north and does not disappear entirely in the
summertime.

The layer of dry ice on the south pole is about eight metres - which would
indicate that the planet has a only a small fraction of the carbon dioxide found
on Earth and Venus, the researchers say.

"Mars has all these flood and river channels, so one theory is that the planet
was once warm and wet," professor Ingersoll said.

This could suggest that there once was a large amount of carbon dioxide in the
planet's atmosphere - enough to produce a greenhouse effect that would allow
liquid water to exist.

The scientists say that finding the missing carbon dioxide - or accounting for
its absence - is now a major goal of Mars research.

Jedi faithful say amen to the almighty Pop Culture

More than 390,000 people listed "Jedi" as their religion on Britain's 2001 census form, more than
those who registered their faith as Jewish, Buddhist or Sikh.

The Jedis declared their belief after a campaign on the Internet asked people to "do it because you
love Star Wars" or "just to annoy people."

"Star Wars devotees stated their faith as 'Jedi' in the mistaken belief that if 10,000 did so it would be
recognized as an official religion," said a spokesman for the Office for National Statistics.

Friday, February 14, 2003

Science In the News

The following roundup of science stories appearing each day in the general
media is compiled by the Media Resource Service, Sigma Xi's referral
service
for journalists in need of sources of scientific expertise.

If you experience any problems with the URLs (page not found, page
expired,
etc.), we suggest you proceed to the home page of "Science In the News"
http://www.mediaresource.org/news.htm which mirrors the daily e-mail
update.

IN THE NEWS

Today's Headlines - February 14, 2003

BREACH IN SHUTTLE SUSPECTED
from The Los Angeles Times

HOUSTON -- A breach in Columbia's skin allowed glowing, superheated air to
penetrate the shuttle--possibly in its left wheel well--seconds before the
craft broke apart over Texas, killing its seven-member crew, investigators
said Thursday.

In its first key finding, the independent board of investigators said the
shuttle fuselage sustained a significant rupture, rather than simply
incurring damage from the loss of a few heat-resistant tiles or another
internal malfunction.

NASA officials now suspect that plasma--air heated to temperatures exceeding
2,000 degrees Fahrenheit--penetrated the shuttle's armor either through the
leading edge of its left wing or through a 300-pound landing gear door.
Either way, one NASA consultant said Thursday night, "that's death."

SCIENTISTS LINK HARMLESS VIRUS TO SLOWING OF HIV'S EFFECTS
from The New York Times

BOSTON, Feb. 13 -- Infection with a common harmless virus seems to slow the
progress of H.I.V. and prolong the survival of AIDS patients, according to
new evidence reported by American scientists at a meeting here today.

Swedish scientists reported a study supporting the link between the harmless
virus, known as GBV-C, and H.I.V. But the Swedish and American authors
disagreed about whether GBV-C could cause the apparent benefit or whether it
was simply an indicator of something else--as yet undetected--that might
account for the variability of H.I.V. infection.

The Swedish and American authors agreed with other participants at the 10th
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections that much more
research was needed to determine the importance of the link before it could
have any effect in AIDS care.

SCIENTISTS DRILL INTO CORE OF KILLER VOLCANO TO TAP SECRETS
from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

TOKYO -- In what resembles a journey to the center of the Earth, Japanese
scientists launched the world's first attempt Thursday to bore a hole into
the red-hot core of a volcano and unlock the secrets of deadly eruptions.

A 164-foot-high oil-rig-like derrick perched on the scrubby slopes of Mount
Unzen will begin drilling through the volcano's crust next week in a bid to
sample the magma bubbling below.

The aim is to study how the liquefied rock begets menacing gas buildup, said
team leader Setsuya Nakata, of the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research
Institute.

A little more than a year after the largest known die-off of monarch
butterflies occurred in the mountains of Mexico, researchers say the
monarchs that migrate there appear to have recovered to near normal
population levels.

The finding was announced jointly by the Mexican government, the World
Wildlife Fund and the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation, all of which
financed or otherwise assisted the research.

"It's more than surprising," said Dr. Bill Calvert, an independent American
biologist who was part of the international team that carried out the new
census. "It's amazing that they recovered so well."

LONDON -- Fresh evidence adds to suspicions that ibuprofen could be
dangerous for most heart patients because it can block the blood-thinning
benefits of aspirin.

New research published this week in The Lancet medical journal found that
those taking both aspirin and ibuprofen were twice as likely to die during
the study period as those who were taking aspirin alone or with other types
of common pain relievers.

Scientists believe ibuprofen clogs a channel inside a clotting protein that
aspirin acts on. Aspirin gets stuck behind the ibuprofen and cannot get to
where it is supposed to go to thin the blood.

WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, responding to days of
debate over duct tape and plastic sheeting, on Thursday defended his new
department's recommendations on how Americans can best protect themselves
during terrorist attacks and promised even greater guidance in the near
future.

Responding to critics who belittled some of the suggestions, Ridge said his
department had worked for the last eight months, even using focus groups, to
find the best ways to prepare the public in the event of terrorist attacks.

In a discussion with the Tribune Editorial Board, Ridge said the department
would be rolling out two major programs next week. One is intended to help
limit the vulnerabilities of the nation's key industries, such as banking,
chemical plants and electric utilities. The other will address civil
preparedness, with more ideas about what Americans can do to safeguard
themselves.

CHILDREN'S SAFETY NEGLECTED ON TERROR FRONT, EXPERTS SAY
from The Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- The nation is not prepared to protect and treat children in
the event of a terrorist attack, child health and safety experts said
Thursday as they concluded a conference in Washington.

"The possibility of large numbers of children in this country being affected
by weapons of terror has not been addressed ... on state or federal or local
levels in most parts of the United States," said Dr. Irwin Redlener,
president of the Children's Health Fund, which develops health-care programs
for disadvantaged children.

Redlener, who also serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics' task force
on terrorism, said disaster planning since the Sept. 11 attacks has focused
primarily on the needs and requirements of adults.

"Children cannot be managed in the same way [as] adults ... for a variety of
reasons that have to do with the anatomical and physiologic makeup of
children," Redlener said.

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE

The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 624 February 13, 2003 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, James
Riordon

A PINPOINT PRECISION MAP of the cosmic microwave background, reported
this
week at a press conference by scientists associated with the orbiting
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), brings the early universe
into
sharper focus. The credibility of WMAP's pronouncement rests on three
things: its angular resolution is some 40 times better than that of its
microwave predecessor, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE); it
comprehensively surveyed the entire sky for a whole year (3 more years
of
data is yet to come); and it measures the polarization of the microwave
radiation; the orientation of the radiation arises partly from the last
scattering of light at the time of "recombination," when stable atoms
formed for the first time, and partly from the time when ultraviolet
radiation strewn by the first generation of stars ionized once again a
lot
of atoms in space. Here are a few of the salient numbers coming out of
the
WMAP analysis: the time of recombination was 380,000 years after the big
bang; the era of the first stars was about 200 million years along
(surprisingly early); the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years; and
the
accounting of matter in the universe is as follows: atomic matter makes
up
about 4%, dark matter about 23%, and dark energy 73%. (Websites:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/;

SALT: THE MOVIE. Solid, liquid, melting, and freezing are concepts that
refer to bulk matter, and not to individual atoms. But what about a
cluster
of a dozen atoms? Louis Bloomfield (University of Virginia) has
assembled a
nano-sized grain of salt, a seven-atom blob of consisting of 4 cesium
atoms
and 3 iodide atoms. Compare this to an ordinary salt grain, with a size
of
.2 mm and about 1.5 million atoms along each side of its cubical
structure.

By spraying this cluster with picosecond pulses of light, Bloomfield has
been able to make a "movie" of sorts showing how the cluster rearranges
its
geometry: sometimes a 2x2x2 cube, sometimes a flat 2x4 ladder, sometimes
an
octagonal ring, all by virtue of the cluster's own internal thermal
energy;
they don't image the cluster directly, but their locations can be
inferred
from a mixture of measurement and theory (for figures and cool movie,
see
http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/research/ ). Separate laser pulses are
used to heat or to view the clusters. One outcome of the experiment:
"melting" of the tiny crystal begins at a "temperature" of 225 C rather
than
626 C, the melting temperature of the bulk material. Studies like this
are
pertinent to the production of nm-sized circuitry since one should know
whether a wire or some other structure will retain its basic shape or
shift
into something else over time. (Dally and Bloomfield, Physical Review
Letters, 14 February 2003 bloomfield@virginia.edu, 434-924-4576; see
also
http://htw.wiley.com/htw/, chapter 15)

ULTRAVIOLET LITHOGRAPHY can produce lines for integrated circuits as
small
as 39 nm in one recent test. To help sustain Moore's law and cram more
and
more gates and memory units into a given space, manufacturers of
microchips
must make the lines in their circuitry ever smaller. This usually means
working with a shorter-wavelength light beam for creating the patterns
used
for inscribing fine features on silicon or metal surfaces. The form of
lithography currently in mass production now can produce a half-pitch
size
(equal lines and spaces in between) of 90 nm and isolated line widths of
65
nm. To produce a later generation after that you would need even
shorter
wavelengths. At the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley
National
Lab (LBNL) a government-industry consortium of scientists is trying out
this
future lithography. Using a beam of synchrotron radiation in the
extreme
ultraviolet range they have produced 70-nm line/space intervals and
isolated
lines 39 nm wide (see figure at http://www.aip.org/mgr/png/2003/179.htm
).
By the time this type of lithography comes into play, by about 2007,
these
numbers should be 45 and 25 nm, respectively. The consortium consists
of a
government side, the "Virtual National Lab" (LBNL, Livermore, and
Sandia),
and an industrial component comprising Intel, AMD, IBM, Infineon,
Micron,
and Motorola. (Naulleau et al., Journal of Vacuum Science Technology,
Nov/Dec 2002; contact Patrick Naulleau, pnaulleau@lbl.gov)

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE is a digest of physics news items arising
from physics meetings, physics journals, newspapers and
magazines, and other news sources. It is provided free of charge
as a way of broadly disseminating information about physics and
physicists. For that reason, you are free to post it, if you like,
where others can read it, providing only that you credit AIP.
Physics News Update appears approximately once a week.

Possible Evolutionary Futures for Mankind

1. With the development of techniques of gene transfer, human genetic defects such as sickle cell
anaemia, phenylketonuria, cystic fibrosis, haemophilia, Huntington's chorea, etc, will be eliminated.

Ninety nine percent of humans in the year 2500 will be much the same as present but healthier.

2. Studies of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology show that many strategies have been
developed in the Animal Kingdom that could be advantageous in furthering Human survival. Some of
these strategies are discussed in the present article.

3. Commensal algae that live in the epidermis of domestic animals (pigs, goats, cattle) will be
developed enabling these animals to live in dry environments with minimal demands for food and
water. Once successful in domestic animals, the algae could be adapted to live in some humans,
i.e. the Green Man

4. Commensal protozoa and bacteria that digest cellulose and lignin will be developed so that they
can live in the human gut and convert cellulose and lignin to sugars, volatile fatty, acids and amino
acids that can be absorbed and metabolised by Man, thus making many inexpensive vegetable food
resources available.

5. Mammalian embryos will be able to develop through to full term in vitro in a cleidoic egg; the in
vitro fertilised egg will not then have to depend on finding a surrogate mother.

6. Some people will have an altered pattern of sexual activity. Many patterns are available; one
suggested here is of protogynous hermaphroditism, i.e. the individuals would be female for the first
30 years of life and male for the remaining years.

7. Most groups of animals have representatives that have returned to living in the oceans. It is
suggested that some humans will adapt or develop so as to live the whole of their lives in the
ocean.

9. Technological developments will produce a hybrid man. Instead of just having glasses, hearing
aids, artificial hip and knee joints, cardiac pacemakers; new electronic implants will be developed to
improve physical functions and also to enable increased sensory awareness and continuous access
to information technology.

Thursday, February 13, 2003

Science In the News

The following roundup of science stories appearing each day in the general
media is compiled by the Media Resource Service, Sigma Xi's referral
service
for journalists in need of sources of scientific expertise.

If you experience any problems with the URLs (page not found, page
expired,
etc.), we suggest you proceed to the home page of "Science In the News"
http://www.mediaresource.org/news.htm which mirrors the daily e-mail
update.

In the News

Today's Headlines - February 13, 2003

ENGINEER WROTE OF POTENTIAL DISASTER
from The Washington Post

HOUSTON, Feb. 12 -- Two days before the shuttle Columbia was lost, flight
controllers at NASA's mission control in Houston had in hand e-mails from a NASA
engineer outlining a nightmare scenario in which a tire might explode, producing
"carnage in the wheel well" and a possible catastrophe when the shuttle returned
from orbit.

The engineer, Robert Daugherty of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton,
Va., sent the e-mail to a colleague at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on
Jan. 30. NASA released the exchange today.

If there were a failure of the heat shielding of the wing in the area of the wheel
well, Daugherty wrote, "at some point the wheel could fail and send debris
everywhere. ... With that much carnage in the wheel well, something could get
screwed up enough to prevent deployment and then you are in a world of hurt."
The e-mails are the first known documentation that anyone at NASA detailed a
specific scenario during the mission in which damage to the heat shield might
lead to disaster.

13 INDUSTRIES SET EMISSIONS TARGETS AS PART OF BUSH INITIATIVE
From The Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Electric utilities and 12 other industries that are major emitters of
greenhouse gases responded Wednesday to President Bush's climate change
initiative by making a commitment to limiting the increase of their emissions.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the declarations represent each industry's
fair share in meeting the president's goal of an 18% decrease in the so-called
greenhouse gas intensity by 2012.

"Our preliminary analysis of the commitments we have in hand indicate they will
yield their sector's share of the president's 18% goal," Abraham said. These
commitments serve as an important measure of the effectiveness of the
president's voluntary approach to tackling the problem of global warming.

New research appears to contradict a widely publicized study that concluded that
inexpensive, old-fashioned diuretics should be the first drug given to people with
high blood pressure.

The conclusion that "water pills" are as good as, if not better than, newer and
more expensive drugs called ACE inhibitors came in a major government-financed
study published Dec. 18 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

But a large study from Australia, the results of which were published today in the
New England Journal of Medicine, found that ACE inhibitors are somewhat better at
preventing heart attacks -- at least in men.

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
Caltech aims to turn out well-rounded engineers and geneticists with a humanities
regimen. Some students say it doesn't compute
from The Los Angeles Times

William Deverell's freshman history course is titled 19th Century America, but it
could be called Revenge Against the Nerds. Deverell teaches at the California
Institute of Technology. Many of his students are walking calculators who breezed
through high school algebra while numbers-shy classmates suffered.

At Caltech, the tables are turned. For all the English majors out there forced to
take physics, Deverell's eight-book class offers some payback. It is part of a
rigorous humanities requirement for the Pasadena institution's 950
undergraduates. Every budding rocketeer, every genome mapper in the making
must complete a four-year program of history and literature, philosophy and
languages, music theory and art studies.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12 - California's largest water agency voted on Tuesday to add
fluoride to the water it supplies to 18 million homes and businesses, from the
Mexican border to the Central Coast.

The agency, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said it would
take more than two years to fluoridate its water to protect teeth from cavities.

"This is very significant in that public water fluoridation has been touted as one of
the great public health achievements of the century," Dr. Timothy Collins,
chairman of the California Fluoridation Task Force, said. Dr. Collins, who is also
head of dentistry for Los Angeles County, said fluoridation could reduce dental
decay by 20 percent to 40 percent.

Buddhist Retreat
Why I gave up on finding my religion.

By John Horgan
Posted Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 12:54 PM PT

For a 2,500-year-old religion, Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with
our scientifically oriented culture, which may explain its surging
popularity here in America. Over the last 15 years, the number of
Buddhist
centers in the United States has more than doubled, to well over 1,000.
As
many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism, surpassing the total
of
Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have post-graduate degrees,
according to one survey. Recently, convergences between science and
Buddhism have been explored in a slew of books—including Zen and the
Brain
and The Psychology of Awakening—and scholarly meetings. Next fall
Harvard
will host a colloquium titled "Investigating the Mind," where leading
cognitive scientists will swap theories with the Dalai Lama. Just the
other
week the New York Times hailed the "rapprochement between modern science
and ancient [Buddhist] wisdom."

Four years ago, I joined a Buddhist meditation class and began talking
to
(and reading books by) intellectuals sympathetic to Buddhism.
Eventually,
and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much more rational
than
the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth; Buddhism's moral and
metaphysical worldview cannot easily be reconciled with science—or, more
generally, with modern humanistic values.

For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed de-emphasis
of
supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God. Buddhism "rejects
the
theological impulse," the philosopher Owen Flanagan declares approvingly
in
The Problem of the Soul. Actually, Buddhism is functionally theistic,
even
if it avoids the "G" word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism
espouses reincarnation, which holds that after death our souls are
re-instantiated in new bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and
effect. Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge
who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before
rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.

Western Buddhists usually downplay these supernatural elements,
insisting
that Buddhism isn't so much a religion as a practical method for
achieving
happiness. They depict Buddha as a pragmatist who eschewed metaphysical
speculation and focused on reducing human suffering. As the Buddhist
scholar Robert Thurman put it, Buddhism is an "inner science," an
empirical
discipline for fulfilling our minds' potential. The ultimate goal is the
state of preternatural bliss, wisdom, and moral grace sometimes called
enlightenment—Buddhism's version of heaven, except that you don't have
to
die to get there.

The major vehicle for achieving enlightenment is meditation, touted by
both
Buddhists and alternative-medicine gurus as a potent way to calm and
comprehend our minds. The trouble is, decades of research have shown
meditation's effects to be highly unreliable, as James Austin, a
neurologist and Zen Buddhist, points out in Zen and Brain. Yes, it can
reduce stress, but, as it turns out, no more so than simply sitting
still
does. Meditation can even exacerbate depression, anxiety, and other
negative emotions in certain people.

The insights imputed to meditation are questionable, too. Meditation,
the
brain researcher Francisco Varela told me before he died in 2001,
confirms
the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, which holds that the self is an
illusion.
Varela contended that anatta has also been corroborated by cognitive
science, which has discovered that our perception of our minds as
discrete,
unified entities is an illusion foisted upon us by our clever brains. In
fact, all that cognitive science has revealed is that the mind is an
emergent phenomenon, which is difficult to explain or predict in terms
of
its parts; few scientists would equate the property of emergence with
nonexistence, as anatta does.

Much more dubious is Buddhism's claim that perceiving yourself as in
some
sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate. Ideally, as
the
British psychologist and Zen practitioner Susan Blackmore writes in The
Meme Machine, when you embrace your essential selflessness, "guilt,
shame,
embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and you become,
contrary to expectation, a better neighbor." But most people are
distressed
by sensations of unreality, which are quite common and can be induced by
drugs, fatigue, trauma, and mental illness as well as by meditation.

Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your
self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva,
brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from
it—and
this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and
Buddhism
becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal,
human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. This may explain
why some Buddhist masters have behaved more like nihilists than saints.
Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United
States
in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of
alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or
masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have
sat
in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous.

What's worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally
infallible—like the pope, but more so. Even the otherwise sensible James
Austin perpetuates this insidious notion. " 'Wrong' actions won't
arise,"
he writes, "when a brain continues truly to express the self-nature
intrinsic to its [transcendent] experiences." Buddhists infected with
this
belief can easily excuse their teachers' abusive acts as hallmarks of a
"crazy wisdom" that the unenlightened cannot fathom.

But what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that
detachment
from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation. Buddha's first step
toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his wife and child, and
Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male monasticism as the epitome
of
spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away
from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly
spiritual. From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment
begins
to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be
solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped.

Some Western Buddhists have argued that principles such as
reincarnation,
anatta, and enlightenment are not essential to Buddhism. In Buddhism
Without Beliefs and The Faith To Doubt, the British teacher Stephen
Batchelor eloquently describes his practice as a method for
confronting—rather than transcending—the often painful mystery of life.
But
Batchelor seems to have arrived at what he calls an "agnostic"
perspective
in spite of his Buddhist training—not because of it. When I asked him
why
he didn't just call himself an agnostic, Batchelor shrugged and said he
sometimes wondered himself.

All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to
believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for
our
spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental,
accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the universe, we
appeared
through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is
not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth
regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions
about
our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to
accommodate science's disturbing perspective. The remaining question is
whether any form of spirituality can.

Scientists Seek Clues in Solar Storm That Enveloped Shuttle

February 13, 2003
By JAMES GLANZ

A storm of particles and radiation from the Sun, a kind of
disturbance that has disabled or destroyed satellites on
dozens of occasions, crossed the path of the space shuttle
Columbia just as it was making its descent to Earth,
scientists said yesterday.

The disturbance was detected by at least two NASA space
probes as it passed from deep space toward Earth on Feb. 1,
said Dr. Devrie S. Intriligator, director of the space
plasma laboratory at the Carmel Research Center, a private
laboratory in Santa Monica, Calif., who discovered the
event by examining data from the probes.

Experts in this complex area of space science, often
referred to as "space weather," said the possibility that
the disturbance contributed to the loss of the Columbia
could not be dismissed. But they cautioned that the Feb. 1
storm was milder than the powerful outbursts that have
previously damaged equipment in space.

Dr. Intriligator and other scientists who have seen the
data describe the phenomenon as a sort of gigantic wave of
electrically charged particles, magnetic fields and
radiation that was moving toward Earth at roughly 400 miles
a second.

"It is a disturbance, a discontinuity, and it did deliver a
punch," Dr. Intriligator said.

So far, a NASA spokesman said, nothing in the abnormal
readings sent to the ground from the wounded craft
suggested that its catastrophic loss began with an
electrical jolt. But he would not rule it out.

"I'm not saying their theory is implausible," said James
Hartsfield, a spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston. "We are still in the process of evaluating
everything."

Another space weather expert, Dr. Daniel Baker, director of
the laboratory for atmospheric and space physics at the
University of Colorado, said the phenomenon should be
examined further. "With such an extraordinary event," Dr.
Baker said, referring to the loss of the Columbia, "you
want to look at every possible contributing factor."

But Dr. Baker said he would be more confident that the
shuttle disaster was related to the disturbance if it had
been more intense. Dr. Intriligator agreed that the
disturbance was modest but said the lack of knowledge about
the region of space where it was detected suggested
scientists should study the possibility. Space physicists
often refer to the region as the "ignorosphere" because
they know so little about its complexities.

Satellites are especially vulnerable to these storms
because they are in orbit for years at a time. By contrast,
the storms have never caused a problem for the shuttle,
NASA officials say, though they track the solar eruptions
that give rise to them and avoid spacewalks when a storm is
in progress.

NASA scientists have warned of the dangers that storms in
space pose for spacecraft under some circumstances. An
August 1996 technical report by scientists at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., noted
that on Jan. 20, 1994, two Canadian communications
satellites suddenly began to "spin out of control" because
"the gyroscopic guidance system on both satellites had
mysteriously failed" during a space storm.

The problem was traced back to an electrical charge picked
up by the spacecraft from the electrically charged gas of
space itself, the report said.

Dr. Intriligator said this kind of "charging" was one of at
least three possible ways the Columbia could theoretically
have been damaged by the storm. Other spacecraft have been
damaged by fast-moving particles, which can strike delicate
electronics like microscopic bullets, or by changes in
Earth's upper atmosphere that occur when the Sun generates
this kind of disturbance.

Earth's relatively dense atmosphere can warm and expand
under the assault of a solar storm, several scientists
said, increasing its grip on satellites and pulling them
down. A Japanese science satellite suddenly tumbled back to
Earth on July 14, 2000, Dr. Baker said, when the drag
increased in a storm and ground controllers did not
compensate adequately.

In particularly intense solar storms, problems in space can
occur by the dozens, Dr. Baker said. Eighteen operational
failures were documented in one such period in May 1998.
"There have been quite a large number of episodes in the
past," he said.

Space storms like the one that moved across Earth on Feb. 1
usually start when powerful magnetic fields near sunspots
suddenly pour their energy into the solar wind, the stream
of particles that continuously speeds away from the Sun
into space.

The particles and their associated magnetic fields move
relatively smoothly until they reach the magnetosphere, a
kind of magnetic field that surrounds Earth like a cocoon.
At that point, the collision generates the powerful
radiation and energetic particles that propagate like a
wave toward Earth.

The two NASA space probes, positioned about a million miles
from Earth, picked up such a disturbance at about 8 a.m.,
Eastern time, on Feb. 1. Using data from the two
satellites, scientists could estimate the speed of the
wave. Dr. Intriligator said she believed it enveloped the
shuttle about an hour later, just about the time NASA began
noticing abnormal sensor readings on the Columbia.

Data from other satellites in the general area could hold
further clues to the potential effects of the storm on the
Columbia, Dr. Intriligator said. She added that if the
shuttle had suffered even small external damage from
another source - like space debris or the piece of
insulating foam that was seen to strike the orbiter on
liftoff - it would be more likely that dangerous electrical
effects could have come into play.

Such damage could create jagged areas that would act like
lightning rods, increasing the danger of any electrical
disturbance in surrounding space.

Spiros Antiochos, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research
Laboratory, said there was a "very low probability" that a
storm in space played a role in the Columbia's demise. But
it would be "premature, a mistake, to make a claim that
it's not viable," Dr. Antiochos said, urging that the
possibility be studied.

'Faith-Based' Rehabilitation Program in Iowa Prison Merges Religion,
Government

Americans United for Separation of Church and State
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2/12/03

A government-backed program that seeks to rehabilitate Iowa prison
inmates
by converting them to fundamentalist Christianity violates the U.S.
Constitution, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
charged
in a pair of federal lawsuits filed today.

A government-backed program that seeks to rehabilitate Iowa prison
inmates
by converting them to fundamentalist Christianity violates the U.S.
Constitution, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
charged
in a pair of federal lawsuits filed today.

Americans United is challenging state promotion of the InnerChange
Freedom
Initiative, a program run by Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship. In the
lawsuits, AU charges that InnerChange constitutes a merger of government
with religion. The program indoctrinates participants in religion,
discriminates in hiring staff on religious grounds and gives inmates
special privileges if they enroll.

The InnerChange program is currently in operation in Iowa, Kansas,
Minnesota and Texas, and a similar program is under consideration for
use
in the federal prison system as well. President George W. Bush and other
advocates of faith-based social services have praised InnerChange as a
model program.

But Americans United insists the arrangement is deeply flawed.

This program is one of the most egregious violations of church-state
separation I've ever seen, said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United
executive director. It literally merges religion and government.

It is unconscionable for the government to give preferential treatment
to
prisoners based solely on their willingness to undergo religious
conversion and indoctrination, said Lynn. Officials should use public
funds to help rehabilitate all prison inmates, not just those who are
willing to convert to fundamentalist Christianity.

Continued Lynn, Sadly, President Bush sees nothing wrong with an
arrangement like this and indeed wants to spread it across all social
services, affecting all Americans. It's a dangerous agenda that must be
stopped.

Americans United filed suit on behalf of Jerry D. Ashburn, an inmate at
Newton Correctional Facility in Newton, Iowa, who objects to the
program's
religious tenets. A separate suit was filed on behalf of family and
friends of Newton inmates who also object to the sectarian emphasis of
the
program.

Both lawsuits assert that InnerChange is based entirely on
fundamentalist
Christianity. InnerChange materials describe the program as a
revolutionary, Christ-centered, values-based pre-release program
supporting prison inmates through their spiritual and moral
transformation
and says it is explicitly Christ-centered.

In addition, InnerChange openly discriminates in hiring staff on
religious
grounds, despite its support from public funds. All employees must be
Christians who are willing to sign a statement of faith that reflects
fundamentalist Christian dogma.

InnerChange staff do not hesitate to discuss the group's sectarian
goals.
Jack Cowley, national director of operations for InnerChange, told The
Non-Profit Times in 2002 that the program seeks to convert inmates to
fundamentalism. From the state's point of view, the mission is to reduce
recidivism, Cowley said. From a ministry point of view, our mission is
to
save souls for Christ.

The lawsuits also note that inmates in the InnerChange program receive
much better treatment than inmates in the general population.
InnerChange
participants, for example, have keys to their cells and have access to
private bathrooms. They are allowed to make free telephone calls to
family
members and are given access to big-screen televisions, computers and
art
supplies. These benefits are not extended to general-population inmates.

Newton officials fund InnerChange in part by charging general-population
inmates and their family members exorbitant rates for telephone calls.
The
profits are then used to pay for 40 to 50 percent of InnerChanges costs.
Housing for the program is also completely subsidized with public funds.

This unusual funding mechanism means that all inmates and their family
members and friends who wish to communicate by telephone are forced to
support InnerChange. Americans United expects other plaintiffs to join
the
cases as they get under way. AU attorneys urged Newton inmates (or those
who pay into the phone fund on their behalf) to contact AU.

These cases have substantial implications for President Bush's
faith-based
initiative, said Ayesha Khan, Americans United's legal director. The
president says it's okay to use public dollars for religious
discrimination, and we say it's not. These cases will be among the first
to determine how far the government can go in funding religious
programs.

In addition to AUs Khan, other attorneys involved in the lawsuits
include
AU Litigation Counsel Alex Luchenitser and local counsel Dean Stowers, a
constitutional lawyer with the Des Moines law firm of Rosenberg, Stowers
&
Morse.

The cases, Ashburn v. Mapes and Americans United for Separation of
Church
and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, are pending in U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in
Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans
about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding
religious
freedom.

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Science In the News

The following roundup of science stories appearing each day in the general
media is compiled by the Media Resource Service, Sigma Xi's referral
service
for journalists in need of sources of scientific expertise.

If you experience any problems with the URLs (page not found, page
expired,
etc.), we suggest you proceed to the home page of "Science In the News"
http://www.mediaresource.org/news.htm which mirrors the daily e-mail
update.

In the News

Today's Headlines - February 12, 2003

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND ANSWERS
Scientists Capture Best Image Ever of Universe's Beginning
From The Washington Post

A powerful satellite has captured the best picture ever taken of the infant
universe, an image so detailed that scientists said it answers some of the most
important questions about the cosmos, including when it was born and how it will
probably die.

The image, created from a year's worth of data collected by a NASA probe 1
million miles from Earth, has solved long-standing puzzles, such as what the
universe looked like right after it was forged in the violent inferno of the big
bang, when the first stars blinked on in the coalescing heavens and what kind of
matter makes up the expanding universe that exists today.

Astronomers calculated that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that the first
stars lighted up just 200 million years after the cosmos was born and that it will
expand forever, thinning and cooling until it eventually reaches nothingness.

TAPES OF SHUTTLE'S DESCENT SHOW DAWNING OF DISASTER
From New York Times

The first hint of trouble came from Jeff Kling, the maintenance and mechanical
officer at Mission Control who was monitoring the descent of the space shuttle
Columbia.

"F.Y.I., I've just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the
vehicle, hydraulic return temperatures," he calmly reported.

The flight director, Leroy Cain, seemed surprised, but not alarmed. "Is there
anything common to them?" he asked. "I mean, you're telling me you lost them
at exactly the same time."

"No, not exactly," Mr. Kling replied. "They were within probably four or five
seconds of each other."

The conversation was made public today as NASA released audio tapes of the
final communications among ground controllers and the crew of the Columbia, a
chilling libretto of the dawning signs of disaster.

HEARINGS OPEN AT CAPITOL WITH VAST RANGE OF QUERIES FOR NASA
From The New York Times

When lawmakers convene on Wednesday morning for a hearing on the space
shuttle disaster, they will examine both the technical aspects of the tragedy and
broader issues about safety, costs and the ultimate goals of the nation's space
program.

The laundry list of questions to be put to NASA's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, will
go to the heart of the manned space program.

Did NASA undercut shuttle safety by shifting money to other programs? Can the
space agency investigate itself, or is a more independent body needed to look
into the Columbia disaster? Should the United States push forward with a
next-generation space vehicle or continue to rely on the shuttles? And what
should the United States do about the over-budget International Space Station,
whose completion has now been thrown in doubt?

As the Bush administration proposes a dramatic increase in research funding to
protect Americans against bioterrorism, congressional and scientific skeptics are
calling for closer scrutiny of the nation's leading biodefense facility.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick,
Md., has accumulated a record of environmental, safety and security problems.

Difficulty concentrating? Getting along with your spouse? Weaning yourself from
the Internet or that computer game to get your work done? Or thinking about all
those things you have to do instead of focusing on what you're reading right now?

The Indianapolis drug maker has been heavily marketing the drug Strattera, also
known as atomoxetine, for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. It's the first
drug approved for ADHD in adults as well as children, and a surprising number of
adults -- including doctors, lawyers and chief executives -- may benefit.

NASA Releases Tape of Final Mission Talk

FEBRUARY 12, 05:10 ET

By PAUL RECER
AP Science Writer

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) — NASA has released transcripts from some of space shuttle Columbia's final radio transmissions, chronicling the efforts of Mission Control engineers as they became painfully aware of the destruction that was unfolding.

In the conversations, released Tuesday, Mission Control reports a litany of problems that seem to worsen by the minute as the shuttle breaks into pieces, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

The first bad news came when Jeff Kling, the maintenance, mechanical arm and crew systems officer, reported a sudden and unexplained loss of data from spacecraft sensors. The assessment came in the final six or seven minutes of the flight.

``I just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle, the hydraulic return temperatures,'' Kling said.

Flight director Leroy Cain quickly asked if there was anything common to the sensors and got bad news in reply. Kling said there was no commonality, suggesting there was a general failure instead of a single system.

In short order, flight controllers begin reporting a string of more problems. There is evidence of small collisions on the tail, and signals are cut off from the nose landing gear and the right main landing gear. Then more sensors are lost and the drag increases to the left.

Hobaugh begins a series of radio calls to Columbia. There is no response as the minutes tick down toward a planned landing at the Kennedy Space Center.

``MILA (the Kennedy spacecraft communication center) is not reporting any RF (radio frequency) at this time,'' says Bill Foster, a ground controller.

``OK,'' says Cain, who then asks hopefully when a radar signal was expected.

The communication checks continue. So does the silence. A radar station near the Kennedy center then says it is putting its radar in a ``search mode.''

``We do not have any valid data at this time,'' said Jones. He said there was a ``blip'' but it was bad data.

Then a long pause, a silence of despair. Then Cain says the final words, the phrase that marked the lack of hope: ``Lock the doors.''

This meant nobody could leave Mission Control or even make phone calls. For the next several hours, the engineers have to ignore the certain loss of the crew and store the data in their computers, finish reports and then write personal accounts of what they saw, heard and did Feb. 1.

Universe to expand for ever

The Universe will expand for ever, at an ever-increasing rate, Nasa
scientists are to announce.

They base their conclusion on new data obtained by the Microwave
Anisotropy
Probe (Map) satellite, which has been orbiting the Sun beyond the Moon
since shortly after its launch in 2001.

Map data also confirm previous findings that most of the Cosmos is
composed
of mysterious "dark energy" that is causing the expansion of the
Universe
to accelerate.

Atoms - the basic components of matter that can give off light -
comprise
only a few per cent of the Universe. As one astronomer put it: "To the
Universe, stars and planets are minor impurities."

Map was launched in 2001 to make its way to the L2 Lagrange point of
gravitational balance between the Earth, Moon and Sun.

Big Bang echo

It is the first probe to be positioned at L2, which is four times
further
away than the Moon, and which follows the Earth and the Moon around the
Sun.

Map's focus is the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. The CMB
was
first detected in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of the Bell
Telephone labs in the US.

It has been called the "echo" of the Big Bang - the event that created
the
Universe about 15 billion years ago.

The CMB is radiation that formed about 400,000 years after the Big Bang,
when the Universe had cooled to such a degree that hydrogen atoms could
exist.

In 1992 the Cosmic Background Explorer (Cobe) satellite detected
fluctuations in the CMB that were attributed to the first structures to
form in the Universe - the so-called seeds of galaxies appearing in the
vast clouds of hot gas that was all the Universe consisted of at the
time.

Ever-cooling

Astronomers believe that the CMB contains a great deal of information
about
the origin and fate of the Universe.

Measurements of the CMB will allow cosmologists to determine basic
parameters of the Universe, for instance whether it will expand for
ever,
or collapse, or whether its expansion will accelerate or slow down.

Able to scan the whole sky every six months, the Nasa satellite is
producing maps of the CMB with unprecedented accuracy.

Map's first release of data will confirm previous results obtained by
the
Boomerang balloon-based detector that flew over Antarctica in 2000.

It will show that "dark energy" dominates the Universe, causing the
expansion of the Cosmos to accelerate.

This will mean that eventually all matter in the Universe will be
scattered
ever more thinly and, as the stars go out and the galaxies fade, all
will
become an ever-cooling thin gas.

Beauty in the eye of the android

Artificial intelligence experts in Fife have unveiled a robotic head
which
they say can scientifically determine how attractive women are to men.

But they have warned that it does not work in reverse because masculine
appeal to women is not as likely to be based on looks alone.

Specialists at Kirkcaldy-based Intelligent Earth company said that the
head-shaped android was capable of calculating how "feminine" or
"masculine" a person's face is.

They claim that with feminine faces the android can assess
attractiveness
to men.

Managing director David Cumming said: "The artificial intelligence
technology we've developed here learns to recognise what sex someone is
by
drawing on its past experiences, in much the same way that the human
brain
learns when we are children.

"It examines a number of facial characteristics to determine what sex
someone is, so the more classically feminine a woman looks, then the
quicker it will decide what sex they are.

"Psychological research has shown that a woman's attractiveness directly
relates to her femininity and so we can also use this reading as a
measure
of a woman's attractiveness to men."

He said the technology was more useful for determining female
attractiveness as women relied more closely on factors other than looks
when making decisions about men.

Robot enthusiasts

The artificial intelligence firm received its first prototype of the
robot,
nicknamed Doki, last week and is now mass producing the android.

Initially it could be used as a receptionist-style greeting device.

Company chiefs said they have already received several orders from
firms,
colleges and robot enthusiasts.

The android will sell for between £3,000 and £5,000, depending on its
features and whether it will be used for teaching purposes.

Using web cameras mounted in the robot's head, an image of a person's
face
is taken and analysed by the robot's on-board computer and compared to
previous faces it has seen.

The robot can currently only perform simple tasks but it is hoped that
later this year it will be developed into an electronic personnel
assistant, which could take messages, recognise frequent visitors and
address them by name.

The company also plans to build a full size android, which can walk and
interact with humans.

A Glimpse of a Future in a New Kind of Light

February 11, 2003
By BARNABY J. FEDER

How many scientists does it take to change the light bulb?

It's not a joke. The ubiquitous light bulb is quietly on
its way to becoming as quaint a relic as the gas lanterns
it replaced more than a century ago. Incandescent bulbs,
neon tubes and fluorescent lamps are starting to give way
to light-emitting microchips that work longer, use less
power and allow designers to use light in ways they never
have before.

The chips - 18 million of them - are already on display in
the $37 million Nasdaq sign in Times Square. They are in
the vibrant facade of the Goodman Theater in Chicago and
adorned last year's White House Christmas tree. More
notable, the chips are penetrating blue-collar tasks like
illuminating traffic lights, brake lights and exit signs.

Lighting experts expect the pace of change to pick up as
researchers continue their relentless efforts to shrink the
chips to microscopic size, improve their already impressive
energy efficiency and increase their brightness. The chips
are expected to move into the general home and office
lighting market as early as 2007.

The eventual result, the experts say, will be savings of
billions of dollars annually in energy and maintenance
costs and a revolution in how people use lighting in homes
and offices to influence their moods.

"We are not talking about replacing light bulbs," said
Arpad Bergh, a former Bell Labs researcher who is president
of an industry trade group working with the government to
promote the new technology. "We are talking about a totally
new lighting industry."

The vision of revolutionary new uses of light reflects the
ability of such lighting, also known as solid-state
lighting, to switch virtually instantaneously among more
than a million shades of color at the command of a
computer. Researchers talk about using the technology to
coordinate lighting effects in a theater with film scenes,
which might make a battle sequence appear to leap off the
screen, or to alter the color and brightness of lighting in
nursing homes at appropriate times, which could help
stimulate or soothe residents.

The chips, which are known as light-emitting diodes, or
L.E.D.'s, have huge performance advantages in many mundane
tasks. In devices like traffic lights, for example, they
consume 80 percent less electricity than do the bulbs they
replace and last up to 10 times as long. Moreover, they
have the safety advantage of gradually fading instead of
unpredictably burning out.

Beyond such obvious benefits, though, it is the ease of
mating the chips to computers that is driving interest.
Programs simple enough to run on a hand-held personal
digital assistant can alter the intensity, pattern and
colors produced by solid-state lights. Color Kinetics, a
five-year-old lighting company based in Boston, calculates
that the various chips it packages with computer controls
can generate up to 16.7 million colors.

That flexibility is already used in advertising and
entertainment. Solid-state lights are featured in numerous
Times Square signs and Broadway shows like "Hairspray." Mad
Doc Software, based in Lawrence, Mass., has designed tools
to link video games to room lighting so that a player in a
Star Trek game who is passing a red nebula would have one
side of a room shift in color.

"It's fantastic how much more immersive the game becomes,"
said Ian Davis, founder of Mad Doc.

Architects and building designers have far more ambitious
possibilities in mind, including mimicking indoors the
variability of natural lighting as the day progresses.
Lighting experts predict that once costs come down, such
flexibility will greatly increase the attention paid to the
role of light in people's moods and health.

"L.E.D.'s are only limited by what we put in the computer,"
said Fred Oberkircher, director of the Center for Lighting
Education at Texas Christian University. "I'm waiting for
the day when clouds of light float across my ceiling."

It may sound whimsical, but Mr. Oberkircher's vision is
rooted in research suggesting that people find the rigid
lighting environments they normally work and dwell in
boring and, in some cases, unhealthy. While most market
projections are based on assessing the progress of
solid-state lights toward matching the cost and performance
of traditional incandescent and fluorescent white lights,
some experts say that such comparisons miss the point.

"The ability to do things you couldn't do before is what
will trigger mass adoption," said Michael Holt, president
of LumiLeds, a leading diode producer that is a joint
venture of Agilent Technologies and Philips Lighting.
"People will become much more attuned to the mental and
health aspects of light in the next 5 to 10 years."

The chips driving the revolution currently cost too much to
use in general lighting. The cost of white-light diodes for
standard electrical sockets is anywhere from 40 to 100
times that of comparably bright incandescent bulbs,
according to various industry estimates.

But like their cousins the microprocessors, the diode chips
are continually improving in performance and plunging in
price. They could become cheap and luminous enough to break
into the general lighting market as early as 2007,
according to a technology road map developed by the
Optoelectronics Industry Development Association, the trade
group Mr. Bergh heads.

By then, the chips are likely to be facing competition in
many specialty applications from a newer form of
solid-state lighting known as organic light-emitting
diodes, or O.L.E.D's. These light-emitting plastics are not
nearly as bright or durable as the chips but may prove to
be more economic for many uses. Like other polymers, they
would be manufactured in continuous processes instead of
batch by batch the way microchips are made. They are
already being used to light small displays, like the
battery-life monitor in the Norelco Spectra razor.

Whatever the progress, experts like Mr. Holt and Charles A.
Becker, head of the L.E.D. for lighting project at General
Electric's research laboratory, say incandescent bulbs are
likely to remain so cheap that they will be widely used for
years to come as white-light sources, even though they are
quite inefficient and fragile.

Light bulbs, which lighting experts deride as heaters that
happen to give off visible light, work by forcing
electricity through a metal filament in a vacuum. About 6
percent of the energy ends up as light. Today's light chips
are up to five times as efficient.

Researchers say that further development could double the
chips' efficiency advantage. If achievable, these gains
would allow solid-state lighting to surpass the efficiency
of fluorescent lamps.

The first practical diode, which emitted low intensity red
light, was invented in 1962 at General Electric. Red and
amber L.E.D.'s came to market in the 1970's as on-off
signals and other indicators for electronics and machinery.
Using diodes for general lighting seemed laughable until
researchers at companies like Cree, Nichia Chemical,
Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard discovered much brighter
materials and relatively inexpensive emitters of blue and
green light in the early 1990's.

Blue diodes were crucial to generating white light, which
could be produced by blending the blue, red and green or by
shining the blue light through a coating of yellow
phosphor. By last year, products built around the new
generation of higher-intensity colors and white light had
become a $1.2 billion market, according to Dr. Robert V.
Steele, director of optoelectronics research at Strategies
Unlimited, a market research company in Mountain View,
Calif.

The biggest market at the moment is in outdoor signs and in
lighting the contours of buildings like fast food
restaurants, where the diodes are displacing neon. The
nation's four million or so traffic signals represent a
smaller market, but diodes have taken over a third of it
and continue to spread rapidly, according to Gary R.
Durgin, vice president for business development for
Dialight, a solid-state lighting supplier based in
Farmingdale, N.J.

Buses, trucks and autos have diodes in brake lights and
interior lighting. Styling and maintenance benefits are
driving the trend, but there are safety benefits, too.
Because the diodes light up fractions of a second faster
than do incandescent lights when a driver hits the brakes,
anyone trailing a vehicle at 65 miles an hour is able to
stop about 19 feet sooner, according to a study at the
University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

New research fields like nanotechnology are spurring
innovation. In July, for instance, Kopin, a manufacturer of
semiconductors and electronics displays based in Taunton,
Mass., disclosed that it had discovered a way to make
millions of pockets just two nanometers thick - the width
of just 10 hydrogen atoms - in the dust-size light-emitting
chips. The nanopockets, as Kopin calls them, help light
escape the chip without being obstructed by microscopic
defects in the chip's crystal structure. The new design cut
the voltage needed to get light out of the chips enough to
grab the attention of makers of battery-operated
electronics.

As a result, Kopin, which was once unknown in the industry,
is gearing up to ship 100 million light chips this year to
contractors who will package them with power and optical
components for use by device manufacturers.

The first applications, according to John Fan, Kopin's
chief executive, are likely to be back-lighting for
liquid-crystal displays on portable electronics and
night-lighting for keys on devices like cellphones. The
chips are so small that the entire year's production could
be easily enclosed in a golf ball.

Mr. Fan and other entrepreneurs have been attracted by the
potentially huge environmental and energy returns from
replacing traditional lights with solid-state devices. One
widely cited study for the Energy Department concluded that
the widespread use of solid-state lighting by 2025 could
cut electricity demand 10 percent and save consumers $100
billion.

Getting there is not a trivial challenge, though.
Researchers say there are numerous hurdles to overcome in
fields like manufacturing technology, chip design and
extraction of the light created in the chips.

The new technology also requires changes in regulations and
standards. For instance, the advertised life of a product
line of light bulbs is set as the length of time until half
of them fail in tests. But solid-state lighting slowly
degrades rather than burning out so the industry is
struggling to come up with an agreed standard for "useful
life."

While many in the industry are confident about where their
markets will end up, the hurdles make it hard to project
how they will get there.

"It's easier to know what will happen 10 years from now
than 2," said Mr. Durgin of Dialight.

New Map Unveiled of Universe at Start of Time

February 11, 2003
By DENNIS OVERBYE

Astronomers unveiled today what they said was the most
detailed and precise map yet produced of the universe at
the beginning of time, one that confirms the Big Bang
theory in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the
prehistory of the cosmos.

The map, compiled by a satellite called the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe, shows the slight variations in
a haze of radio microwaves believed to be the remains of
the fires of the Big Bang. Cosmologists said the map would
serve as the basis for studying the universe for the rest
of the decade.

It reveals the emergence of the first stars in the cosmos,
only 200 million years after the Big Bang, some half a
billion years earlier than theorists had thought, and gives
a first tantalizing hint at the physics of the "dynamite"
behind the Big Bang.

By comparing their data with other astronomical
observations, the astronomers said, they had arrived at a
definitive measurement of the basic parameters that
characterize the universe, including its age, geometry,
composition and weight. The result, they said, is a
seamless and consistent history of the universe, from its
first few seconds, when it was a sizzling soup of particles
and energy, to the modern day and a sky ribboned with
chains of pearly galaxies inhabited by at least one race of
puzzled and ambitious bipeds.

"We have laid the cornerstone of a unified coherent theory
of the cosmos," said Dr. Charles Bennett, an astronomer at
the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and head
of an international team of astronomers who built the
satellite that produced the map.

The WMAP satellite was launched on June 30, 2001, and has
been orbiting the Earth and recording cosmic emanations
from a point on the other side of the moon. The satellite
and its map are the long-awaited successor to NASA's COBE
satellite, which first mapped the cosmic radiation in broad
brush strokes in 1992. The new satellite can resolve
features one-fortieth the size of those in the COBE map,
which was once referred to as the "face of God."

Originally known as MAP, it was named today in honor of Dr.
David Wilkinson, a Princeton University cosmologist and
leader of the MAP project who died last September.

The WMAP results, which have been eagerly awaited and
tightly guarded in recent weeks, were announced at a press
conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington, today, and
posted on WMAP's Web site, http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/. Dr.
Bennett and his collaborators have submitted a set of 13
papers to The Astrophysical Journal.

"I think there is no longer any credible alternative to the
Big Bang," said Dr. David Spergel, a Princeton
astrophysicist and member of the WMAP team.

The WMAP results largely confirm the strange picture that
has emerged from various astronomical observations over the
last few years of a universe full of mysterious dark matter
that is being accelerated apart by an even more mysterious
"dark energy."

In a nutshell, the universe according to WMAP is 13.7
billion years old, plus or minus one percent. It is
geometrically "flat," in accordance with the simplest
solutions of Einstein's equations, which equate gravity
with the bending of space time. By weight it is 4 percent
atoms, 23 percent dark matter - presumably
as-yet-undiscovered elementary particles left over from the
Big Bang - and 73 percent "dark energy."

These vital statistics are almost identical to those
previously calculated by cosmologists based on balloon and
groundbased glimpses of the microwaves. They nevertheless
hailed WMAP and said it had exceeded their expectations.
Dr. Max Tegmark, of the University of Pennsylvania called
the results "wild," and said WMAP had put the ball in the
court of regular astronomy to match its precision. "MAP
will be the foundation of all cosmology in the next five
years," he said.

Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of
Chicago, hailed the MAP team and said, "To a cosmologist,
their map has the emotional impact of looking at a
beautiful painting."

Dr. John Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton, and a self-described skeptic
described the results as a "smorgasbord of goodies," and
said they marked a "rite of passage" for cosmology from
philosophical uncertainty to precision. He said that in his
opinion the most revolutionary result was that there were
no revolutionary results. Astronomy had gotten it right.
"The motley mixture of strange elements that astronomers
have put together over the last two or three decades is
confirmed to remarkable accuracy."

"We've answered the set of questions that have driven the
field of cosmology for the last two decades," Dr. Spergel
said. "How many atoms in the universe? How old is the
universe?"

The task now, he and others agreed, is to understand those
motley elements, the dark stuff that apparently makes up 96
percent of everything, and what happened in the Big Bang
that gave birth to it all. "We haven't explained
everything," Dr. Bennett said. "I can't say what dark
matter is, or what dark energy is."

The cosmic microwaves have mesmerized astronomers ever
since they were discovered in 1965 as a faint radio hiss
filling the sky by two Bell Laboratories radio astronomers,
Dr. Arno Penzias and Dr. Robert Wilson, subsequently Nobel
laureates. They represent a snapshot of the universe as it
was cooling to the point where atoms could form, at an age
of about 400,000 years. But water vapor in the atmosphere
obscures the microwaves and so astronomers have had to be
satisfied with glimpses from mountaintops or balloons.

In 1992 COBE confirmed that this cosmic gravy has lumps,
the seeds from which galaxies and other cosmic structures
would grow. Since then a series of smaller experiments with
names like Boomerang, Maxima, CBI, and DASI have studied
these lumps, which can be used to diagnose properties like
the geometry and matter density of the cosmos, on finer and
finer scales. These experiments suggested that the universe
was flat and dominated by dark energy, but they only
glimpsed small portions of the sky for limited times.

WMAP scans the whole sky every six months. It is designed
to operate for four years. The new map was based on the
first year's worth of data.

In addition to measuring the brightness or temperature of
the microwaves, WMAP, like a pair of Polaroid sunglasses,
can also measure their polarization. That ability was key
to the discovery of the era of the first stars. Like light
skipping off a lake, the electric and magnetic fields that
constitute light bouncing off an electrified gas are not
jumbled but show a preference to vibrate in a particular
plane. Last year astronomers from the DASI project showed
that a polarization had been imparted to the cosmic
microwaves at the moment that the first atoms formed, and
the cosmic fireball thus lost its free electrons.

But astronomers thought there should be another
polarization episode. When the lights went on in the
universe, blazing ultraviolet from the first stars would
have stripped the electrons from hydrogen atoms in space.
Those electrons, which scatter the cosmic microwaves, would
also polarize them again.

Most astronomers suspected that this had happened at about
the time of the most distant and early quasars, around 800
million years of age. It was a surprise, astronomers said,
to find the stars had formed so early.

The first stars, Dr. Bennett explained in an interview,
were probably monsters 100 times as massive as the Sun,
which burned out rapidly and violently, transmuting
primordial hydrogen and helium into heavy elements like
carbon and oxygen and spewing them out into space to form
the basis for future generations of stars and eventually
life.

"This will give those studying the first stars lots to
think about," Dr. Turner said of the discovery. Dr. Tegmark
added that these would become tempting targets for the
so-called next generation space telescope, the successor to
the Hubble Space Telescope

The WMAP scientists also said that their data was beginning
to shed light on a theory of what might have been going on
during the Big Bang.

That theory, known as inflation, hypothesizes that the
universe underwent an enormous growth spurt during the
first trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time under
the influence of a brief but powerful antigravitational
field that permeated space. Such behavior is allowed by the
laws of physics, and it has formed the core of Big Bang
theorizing, but the details depend on the unknown physics
that prevails at the energies of the early universe - far
beyond the capacity of modern particle accelerators. And so
inflation, as Dr. Bennett noted, is often called a paradigm
instead of a theory.

By analyzing the bumps in the cosmic microwaves, which
according to inflation are the result of microscopic
fluctuations in the mysterious force field that drove
inflation, along with other data, Dr. Spergel said, the
WMAP scientists might be able to rule out one simple
version of inflation that is often seen in textbooks. Other
more complicated versions, he added, seemed to fit the data
quite well.

"The data are good enough to rule out whole classes of
inflationary theories," Dr. Spergel said. That ability, he
said, represented a "new frontier" for particle physicists,
who want to know what laws governed the universe at the
beginning of time.

"It really is a big hint for them," he said, adding that
the physics that prevailed during the time of inflation is
"the highest energy physics we can measure."

Dr. Bahcall said that particle physicists should be
"thrilled." They are now working not just with a pencil and
paper but with detailed measurements in the early universe.
"That the simplest model fails has to be good news to
them," he said.

Other astronomers noted that there was a flip side of this
new "precision cosmology." Small deviations in WMAP data
from theoretical predictions would have to be taken
seriously, and are likely to be the subject of future
research. If these effects are real, and not noise in the
instruments, it could be a signal of a need to change the
models.

Microwave Anisotropy Probe results

The initial results have finally been released. They mostly confirm what
we
know or thought to be the case. The Big Bang is yet even more strongly
confirmed than before. I expect to see more detailed information about
the
results in a few days or so. (The instrument has been renamed and is now
called WMAP in honor of Dr. David Wilkinson, a Princeton University
cosmologist and leader of the MAP project who died last September.)
From http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/mr_limits.html

We use our new detailed picture to ask: "What happened earlier to make
this
picture happen?" We now begin to probe the earliest moments of the
universe: Inflation (the rapid expansion of the universe a fraction of a
second after its birth.). We have ruled out a textbook example of a
particular inflation model. But others will be supported with this new
evidence.

Starting from the time of our picture we can ask: "What must have
happened
later?"
We have compared and combined the new WMAP data with other diverse
cosmic
measurements (galaxy clustering, Lyman-alpha cloud clustering,
supernovae,
etc.), and we have found a new unified understanding of universe:

The data places new constraints on the dark energy. It seems more like a
"cosmological constant" than a negative-pressure energy field called
"quintessence". But quintessence is not ruled out.
Fast moving neutrinos do not play any major role in the evolution of
structure in the universe. They would have prevented the early clumping
of
gas in the universe, delaying the emergence of the first stars, in
conflict
with the new WMAP data.

Man Tells Judge He Wants Jesus As Lawyer

GAINESVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri man can have Jesus Christ
as his attorney, but
only one licensed to practice Missouri law will be allowed to speak for
him during trial on
charges he tampered with a judge.

Defendant Richard John Adams, who described himself as a patriot and a
Christian, told the
Ozark County judge presiding over his case that under that ruling, he
was ``being restricted
to the devil.''

Adams, of Branson, said he refers to lawyers as ``devils'' because he
believes the Missouri
Bar Association ``created the Federal Reserve through their
unconstitutional statutes and
case laws.''

Adams formerly associated himself with a militia and Christian Identity
movement but has
since said he's not a member of any group.

Adams is scheduled to stand trial March 19-20 on two counts of tampering
involving Ozark
County Associate Circuit Judge John Jacobs of Gainesville.

Adams, whose age was not available, requested Jesus Christ as his trial
attorney during a
hearing Wednesday. He listed ``Christian brother'' Lee Constance of
Alton as co-counsel.
Constance is not licensed to practice law in Missouri.

Ozark County Circuit Judge John Moody told Adams it was fine for Jesus
Christ to be his chief
counsel, but no one — including Constance — could speak for him in the
courtroom unless a
lawful attorney.

Adams replied that his choice of lawyers was ``religious in nature.''

Moody offered to let Adams sign a waiver of counsel, but Adams objected
to the language in
the document and declined.

Adams said he planned to appeal the decision.

The case began when Adams was ticketed March 24 in Howell County for
speeding and failing to
wear a seat belt.

Both charges have since been dropped. But the two felony counts of
tampering stem from those
proceedings, during which Adams requested a change of venue to Ozark
County.

One count alleges Adams harassed Jacobs during a July 3 hearing by
filing a letter in a court
file saying he would sue the judge because he was incompetent.

His allegation implies Jacobs needed ``a guardian to make his decisions
for him and to the
effect that he is unable by reason of any physical or mental condition
to receive and
evaluate information or to communicate decisions,'' prosecutor Thomas
Cline said in court
records.

The second count alleges Adams tampered with a judicial officer on Aug.
13 by threatening to
sue Jacobs for violating his civil rights. Adams was ordered removed
from the court after he
became antagonistic over Jacobs' ruling, according to records.

Cline said Monday that he could not comment on the case prior to trial.

In court records, Cline said the statement was intended to threaten
Jacob because a suit
would require the judge ``to incur expenses of retaining counsel and
providing a defense.''

Adams faces a maximum of 14 years in prison if convicted of both counts.

Consumers in Europe Resist Gene-Altered Foods

TOTNES, England, Feb. 7 — At the Happy Apple greengrocer in this
Elizabethan town in England's West Country, the roasted vegetable pasty
is labeled, clearly and proudly, as GM-free. So is the hommity pie and
a scattering of other products crammed onto shelves.

In fact, all across Britain and most of the rest of Europe, shoppers
would be hard pressed to find any genetically modified, or GM, products
on grocery store shelves, and that is precisely how most people want it.

Tinkering with the genetic makeup of crops to make them faster-growing
and more resilient, something done routinely in the United States with
seldom a pang of consumer concern, is seen here as heretical, or at the
very least unhealthy.

In some countries, including France and Austria, there is an unofficial
moratorium on the sale of genetically modified foods. Such foods simply
cannot be found there.

"It's not the natural order of things, that's all," Heather Baddeley,
who was picking up lettuce and avocados at the Happy Apple, said about
GM foods. "It's a kind of corruption, not the right thing to do, you
know?"